There’s a lot of Draisaitl and McDavid here, which is what fuelled a rant by TSN’s Craig Button. On TSN1260 radio, the former NHL GM critiqued Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli’s latest trades for Alex Petrovic and Brandon Manning, but praised McDavid and especially Draisaitl.

Button also hinted that Chiarelli may be selling out the future with his current trades, so the GM needs to be fired.

“Let’s be real serious here, Petrovic and Brandon Manning are bottom pair defencemen. Are they upgrades on Jason Garrison? … Yeah, they probably are. Are they good enough to help you win and be a successful team, and where I’m talking successful, make the playoffs? I don’t think so. One of the worst teams in the league defensively is Florida. Chicago has been a nightmare. What you’re trying to do is, the dam has got all these holes, you got two thumbs, you got four holes, so you one thumb into that hole, the other thumb into that one, right, and we’ll manage the water coming from the other two. What you’re trying to do, and Ken Hitchcock talked about it, he’s got some holes, he appreciates the effort to try to do it. But these are the types of moves that I get in the short term, but they’re not moving the Oilers. I mean, ask your guys this question: take away 97 and 29? I know you could say that about a lot of teams. These two guys drive the team every single night. I’m blown away by how good they are. We all know how good Connor is but I don’t think Leon gets enough credit. He’s another driver of significant play. He’s a big time player.”

The Oilers, Button said, are “asking too much of way too few… Until they get more skill in their line-up, and I’m talking on the blueline and upfront, the team is what it is. It’s going to be reliant on too few players to do way, way too much.”

Button addressed fears the Chiarelli might make a short term trade to improve the team at the expense of the Oil’s future. Button said the key here is president Bob Nicholson and owner Daryl Katz. “I don’t think it begins with Peter Chiarelli. I think it begins at the ownership level and the president level. So Bob Nicholson is the chairman and he speaks to it.”

The GM has to manage the company for today and make sure he’s not harming the company for the future, Button said. “This idea that you’re going to do something today that might help but will hurt it in the future, if that’s what Peter Chiarelli is doing, if I’m Bob Nicholson: ‘Thank you Peter, you’re out of here.’ Peter needs to do what is best for the organization and weigh out: ‘this will help us today but it’s not going to help us long term, or it’s not going to hurt us in the immediate mid-term, which is next year.’ That’s the manager’s job.

“One of the things that drives me crazy, ‘Oh, the manager has got to do something to save his job. He’s got to do something.’ When I start hearing that managers have to do something to save their job, you know what that means? Get him out of there. Get him out of there. Because they’re done, they’re finished. And that is not good practice, that is not good management.”

My take

I’m not exactly sure if Button is saying the Oilers should fire Chiarelli now or not. He seems to be saying this, mainly because some people are saying Chiarelli is making trades right now just to save his job, trades that will hurt the team in the future, namely trading away Drake Caggiula for Brandon Manning.

I don’t necessarily buy that Manning for Caggiula is a bad trade. Caggiula had some good luck shooting this year, but he’s been one of the NHL’s worst defensive wingers two years in a row. He’s also got a year left on his deal that pays him $1.5 million per. Manning has a year left at $2.25 million per so he’s somewhat more expensive. At the same time, the Oilers need to plug a gap on defence to stay in the playoff race this year — and this playoff race is damn important to this team and its fans. I’m sure not interested in another season going down the tubes so fast. The Oilers have plenty of wingers who can play at least as well as Caggiula in terms of their two-way play. This trade can be defended. It’s not beyond the pale. It’s not selling out the future of the Oilers. It may not be a good trade, but does not look like a GM-firing offence. This isn’t to say Chiarelli should not be fired for the body of his work, but I don’t buy this Manning trade as a trigger for firing.

Connor McDavid is on track for 125 points. Leon Draisaitl is on track for 104 points. I can’t agree with Button that this is asking too much of these two players at least. This kind of scoring is exactly what you’d expect from McDavid in a peak year, and it’s not far off what you’d expect from a player like Draisaitl playing with McDavid on the power play and at even strength.

McDavid makes $12.5 million per, Draisaitl $8.5 million per. If they’re not going to put up these kind of numbers and lead the team to victory, who is? That is their job and they’re doing it even better than they did last year. They are excelling, playing like league leaders, the best players in the NHL, which is a reasonable expectation for both of them.

Is everyone else but Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Alex Chiasson underachieving on the attack? Yes. For sure. But I don’t see Tobias Rieder, Jesse Puljujarvi, Zack Kassian and Ty Rattie as terrible players. All four are getting the job done reasonably well at the defensive end but they’re not cashing in on their shots. Rieder has no goals on 52 shots. Zack Kassian has two goals on 44 shots, Puljujarvi three on 35 shots and Rattie two on 43 shots. That’s some wickedly bad puck luck.

It’s worth noting some of these shots have been excellent shots as well, Kassian with 15 Grade A shots on net, Puljujarvi with 13, Rattie 16 and Rieder, 9. Grade A shots usually got in about 25 per cent of the time. Including all their other shots, you would expect this group to have at least 14 or 15 goals between them, not seven. That’s not a huge increase in scoring, but it would have likely bought the Oilers another win or three (Of course, the lack of puck luck for these four has been balanced out somewhat by Chiasson, shooting at 32 per cent, and Caggiula at 14 per cent).

The one player who has truly disappointed, of course, is Milan Lucic, who is no longer any kind of offensive threat and is also weak on defence. Chiarelli invested $6 million per year in him for years to come. Button said the Oilers don’t have enough skill in their forward group and Button is right about that, with Chiarelli’s hiring of Lucic being the major reason for this deficit. That $6 million per could have been used on some other player who can put in goals.

Button ripped on Puljujarvi — and Rattie as well: “He’s starting to look more and more like a miss. Like he really is…He looks like he’s trending to like he’s not going to cut it, at least not in Edmonton. And I know what they tried to do with Ty Rattie, but he just can’t do it.” I remain more bullish on both players than Button is, but time will tell. It’s all about scoring goals, in the end, and it’s certainly time for Puljujarvi, Rattie, Rieder and Kassian to each score a few.

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